I have heard Michele Bachmann and others say that now that it is officially a “tax,” it can be overturned by 50 + 1 in the Senate.
Not by a President Oboma, but yes with a President Romney. Her point was win the Senate (not requiring 60 votes) and he White House and you can repeal by reconciliation. Don’t know if they would have the guts to do it, but the Rats dit it in passing initially. Not too much precedent.
I have heard Michele Bachmann and others say that now that it is officially a “tax,” it can be overturned by 50 + 1 in the Senate.
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I believe this is correct.
More Information:
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Obamacare’s health insurance mandate is in fact a tax levied on those who do not purchase insurance, Senate Republicans will look to repeal the full law through the budget reconciliation process.
Reconciliation was used to push Obamacare through the Senate in 2009. Generally reserved strictly for budget-related measures, it eliminates the possibility of a filibuster, meaning Republicans would only need 51 votes to repeal that portion of the law – or even the full law itself.
“Michele Bachmann and others say that now that it is officially a “tax,” it can be overturned by 50 + 1 in the Senate.”
That’s only for getting it through the senate.
It’s repealed ONLY IF THE PRESIDENT SIGNS THE BILL.
If the President vetoes you need a 2/3rds to override. We wont have that many.
Bottom line: If Obama wins, we have ObamaTaxCare forever.
If Romney wins, and we get a Republican House and Senate, we get it repealed.
Robert’s bought the administration’s second fallback argument — that the penalty for not buying insurance is a tax, even though the administration abandoned that argument during the course of litigation, and even though calling it a “tax” would seem to implicate the Anti Injunction Act, which would preclude the Court from even deciding this case until someone was forced to pay the tax, which won’t happen for another couple of years. Yet the Court apparently brushed aside that AIA impediment — talk about lawlessness — in its rush to uphold ObamaCare.
And so there’s your foundation for the decision: the individual mandate is constitutional based on Congress’s power to tax: Congress can “tax” those who don’t buy government approved health insurance. Don’t ask what kind of a “tax” that is! It’s not an income tax. Nor is it a duty, impost, or excise tax, the only kinds of taxes recognized under the Tax Clause of the Constitution, where Roberts purports to rest Congress’s power; and it certainly isn’t “uniform throughout the United States,” as is required for those taxes. It’s sui generis, which is a polite way of saying it’s unconstitutional — if we take the Constitution seriously.
But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? As James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, and virtually everyone else at the Founding made clear, the power to tax, the first of Congress’s 18 enumerated powers, like the power to borrow, Congress’s second enumerated power, was designed to enable Congress to obtain the funds needed to carry out its other enumerated powers or ends. It was not, as Madison made clear in Federalist 41, and often on the floor of Congress, an independent power to tax for any purpose at all. Search as you will through those 18 enumerated powers and you will find no power to enact ObamaCare or anything like it. And please don’t say that the taxing power serves the commerce power which in turn authorizes the individual mandate, because the Court nixed that second leap today. ~ Roger Pilon [Cato]
One of the major accomplishments of the Congress in 2013 will need to be the “Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 2013”. It’s overall intent will be to include all the measures necessary to comply with a targeted budget level. But it can also have (more accurately MUST HAVE) bundled within it all kinds of related measures that would otherwise get nowhere due to filibustering by the 2013 Democrat Senate minority. These measures can include the complete defunding of leech liberal organizations such as NPR, the massive reduction in funding for out=of-control liberal arms of government such as the EPA and Dept of Education. Secondary to such funding reduction will have to be elimination of provisions in US law over which they have jurisdiction.
To do any of this we’ll have to no longer have wemps (à la McConnell) in charge of Senate Republican decisions, tactics & strategy.
Let’s all work for Senate conservatives candidates in this election!